“An vnder black dubblett signifying a Spanish hart”: Costumes and Politics in Middleton’s A Game at Chess

The political significance of Middleton’s A Game at Chess has drawn scholarly attention in the past, but one promising area of study has gone largely unconsidered: the play’s visual presentation. How did the actors appear when they first performed the play and how was that visual information received by early modern London audiences? This essay seeks to establish what costumes were worn by the King’s Men for their production of Middelton’s play and, more importantly, how they were received by their contemporary audience. Through such a study, we learn that Middleton employed costumes as skillfully as he used dialogue to manifest the politics of his play. A Game at Chess engages the visually based semiotics of the time to comment specifically (and comically) on the perfidy of Catholicism, the tyranny of Spain, and the immaturity of the Spanish King